Museum Of Fine Arts Houston Director Explains Unique Mix Of Factors Which Lead To Reopening

When the Museum of Fine Arts Houston reopened to members on May 20 and to the public on May 23, it became the first major American art institution to do so since coronavirus closures shut down the sector nationwide in mid-March. Museums in Texas were given the green-light to reopen by the governor when he included them on his state’s Phase 1 business reopening list which took effect May 1.

After extensive dialogue with state and local officials, as well as with museum staff and the board of directors, MFAH became comfortable with the reopening date.

Numerous measures have been put in place by the museum to safeguard the experience for guests and employees including:

·        All staff and visitors are required to wear face masks while in museum buildings.

·        Advance, online, timed-entry tickets are being strongly encouraged.

·        Credit or debit cards the only way to pay; no cash is permitted on-site for any purchases.

·        Visitor capacity has been reduced at the main campus and house museums.

·        A single designated visitor entrance has been incorporated.

·        Social-distancing markers have been placed throughout the institution.

·        Temperature checks for visitors and staff are required prior to entry.

·        Acrylic panels have been installed in front of the admissions desk and the MFA Shop cashier station.

·        Audio tours have been discontinued.

·        MFAH staff will operate entry doors.

·        Enhanced cleaning of high-touch surfaces is taking place throughout the day.

·        Hand-sanitizer stations have been placed throughout the buildings.

“Starting with May 1, we went into high gear with weekly meetings to assess what protocols we would implement and make sure we had everything in place–decals, posters, stanchions, sanitizer, masks, temperature scanners–it was only once we had everything on the premises that we felt we could schedule a date to reopen,” MFAH Director Gary Tinterow told Forbes.com.

The museum will operate Wednesdays through Sundays, temporarily closing Tuesdays in addition to Mondays. Until further notice, no programs, tours or films will take place on the museum’s campus and the MFA Café will remain closed at both its locations.

What has the first week open been like?

“It’s gone as well as we could possibly imagine with none of the problems we could have anticipated,” Tinterow said. “The visitors have been remarkably cooperative and respectful of our requirements, they are behaving, they are practicing physical distancing, they are submitting to temperature scans, they are wearing their masks properly and that gives us great comfort.”

Tinterow also credits his staff for the successful reopening.

“Of course staff was nervous about returning, interacting with the public, having to wear masks themselves, submitting to new procedures and protocols, there was some hesitation and certainly a lot of unfamiliarity and anxiety, it all dissipated when we opened,” Tinterow recalls. “As soon as the front-line staff was able to see the impact they had on the community, they understood again what their role was and what their contribution to the community was.”

He added that no adjustments to the museum’s initial reopening requirements were necessary, saying “it has worked just like we hoped it would.”

The Texas-based art publication Glasstire.com provides a first-hand visitor account of being back inside MFAH’s galleries on May 23.

While leading the way for arts institutions, MFAH was not the first large Houston museum to reopen. That distinction went to the Museum of Natural Sciences which reopened May 15.

“When I saw that their first day went very well and that Houstonians were complying with the protocols, that’s when I gave the final go-ahead for us to reopen to members on the following Wednesday,” Tinterow said.

Did recognition for being first among American art institutions to reopen its doors factor into the decision?

“We were not looking to be the first and frankly it didn’t matter to us whether we were the first or the last,” Tinterow said. “The issue was for us to reopen and provide our service to the community as soon as we could do so safely.”

MFAH’s decision to reopen on May 20 will seem shockingly premature in many parts of the country. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has announced that it hopes to reopen in mid-August, but that’s only a hope.

Houston, however, is not New York. Those differences allowed for this decision.

As of May 31, Houston’s metro area has reported a total of 19,118 confirmed coronavirus cases with 435 deaths.

For the fourth largest metropolitan population in the United States, that’s a surprising low figure?

Why so low?

For starters, public transportation is not widely used in Houston. Houston is a car town, a form of social distancing in itself. What’s more, Houston is the butt of jokes for not even having sidewalks for people to come in contact with each other. Contrast those facts with major northeastern cities.

Additionally, Houston’s six million metro residents are spread out over an area the size of Massachusetts. It is the least dense metro area of any large city in country with the largest metro area by square miles. By comparison, residents in Houston are 10 times more spread out than the equivalent population of Palm Beach, Florida to Miami.

Finally, 92% of visitors to MFAH are local residents. Again, contrast that figure with the huge number of tourists welcomed annually by The Met or Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, or the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. All are filled daily with hundreds of guests from around the country and world.

Visitors to the MFAH are in for a treat. In addition to the prestigious permanent collection, a temporary exhibit of British painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) is now on view. “Francis Bacon: Late Paintings,” features some 40 canvases, including an array of the artist’s monumental triptychs, which are among his most celebrated works and completed in the last two decades of his production, from 1971 to 1991. The exhibit has been extended through August 16.

“Bacon had gone down several roads, and maybe even a couple of dead end alleys, during his career, but starting in 1970 there is a crystallization of his work that focuses almost exclusively on scenes of sex, or love, and death, and life and human nature,” Tinterow said. “That philosophical focus on what is it to be human, what is it to be alive, what is our fascination with violence and sex and death all about and I think his late work explores those existential themes almost exclusively.”

Bacon’s tormented figures, his grotesquely distorted faces and bodies seem a perfect pairing for the turmoil taking place across present day America.

A show of his late work is particularly powerful because Bacon, unlike many artists, was doing his best work late in his long life. There is good reason for this.

“By the time 1970 comes around, he has a facility and a manual dexterity that he didn’t have early in his career,” Tinterow said. “So much of the first half of his career was him trying to express his visions with the limited capacity of his physical ability–his ability to draw, his ability to paint–by the time 1970 came around, he could physically realize anything that he imagined, previously he had to fit the vision of what he wanted to paint with the reality of his hand and accommodate the two, by 1970, no compromise was necessary.”

Practice, it turns out, even for Bacon, makes perfect.

“For all of his alcoholism, for all of his masochism, for all of his self-destructive and abusive behavior, he was extremely diligent and disciplined about his painting–every morning–and it paid off, and so finally he was able to render anything he wanted,” Tinterow said. “What I see in his late work is a distillation of his themes and a laser focus on what he wants to communicate and finally a complete ability to render in two dimensions what he imagines.”